Senate Probes NIMC Over N229m Contract Payments

The Senate Public Account Committee is currently investigating the authorities of the National Identity Management Commission over the alleged non- compliance with Public Procurement Act in the award of a N229m contract.

The SPAC hinged the probe on the query contained in the 2017 report of the Auditor General for the Federation which it is currently scrutinising.

The Chairman of the Senate panel, Senator Matthew Urhoghide, sustained the query at the sitting of his panel on Tuesday and demanded further information from the agency.

The query partly reads, “Audit observed that capital payment vouchers reference number: NIMC/LS/IGL/1/11/105, dated 25th October, 2017 for ₦229.7m showed that NIMC procured 22 units of HP blade servers for Morpho BSS upgrade.

“The items were supplied. There was no evidence of Ministerial Tender’s Board approval, thus, negating the mandatory ‘Open Competitive bidding. Public advertisement in at least two national dailies, as required by Financial Regulation 2907 (1) and section 251(ii) of the Public Procurement Act was absent.”

The Director-General of NIMC, Aliyu Aziz, said that the contract fell within the threshold of the Commission’s Tenders Board because it was classified under ‘works’.

He said that all the servers had been supplied before the initial payment of 45 per cent which represent part payment and not mobilisation due to paucity of funds.

He added that the commission had registered 57 million people as of Tuesday while 90 servers was needed to register 100 million Nigerians.

He said the Commission will on Wednesday (today) submit a N25bn proposal to buy more server in order to take the whole population.

But Uroghide said that it was wrong for the commission to continue 2012 Procurement process in 2017.